^yTj^^-c^^^"^ ^C^^^^-^'f^ 



E 449 
.V242 
Copy 1 




THE 



CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE 



OF 



ABOLITIONISM. 



SK-SlilTT 4 CO. , PKIXTERS. 



(^^f-tn^ ^ 






The Character and Influence of Abolitionism. 



A SERMON 



PREACHED IX THE 



FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, BROOKLYN, 



Sabbath Evening, Dec. 9tli, 1860, 



BY 



Eev. HENEY J. VAN DYKE, Pastor. 



IV 



PTJBLISHIilX) BY REQUEST. 



N E W - Y R K : 
GEORGE F. NESBITT & CO, PRINTERS, 

CORNER OF PEARL AND PINE STS. 

1860. 



New- York, December llih, 1860. 
To the Rev. Hexry J. Yan Dyke. 
Hev. and Dear Sir : 

Having heard your sermon, on Sabbatli evening last, on 
the " Character and Influence of Abolitionism," we feel 
convinced that a wider circulation of its sentiments is called for 
in a time like the present, and we request the favor of you to 
furnish us with a copy, that it may be published in pamphlet 
form, for the above purpose. 

You have oiu' lasting thanks, for the fearless stand you 
have taken upon the great question of the day ; and for the 
noble defence of principles which are so applicable to the per- 
petuity of our former happy, but now distracted and threatened, 
country. "We do not despair of the Union, if such sentiments 
shall rule in the hearts and govern the judgment of our 

countrymen. 

AYith much esteem, yours, &c., 



JAS. T. SOUTTER, 

G. B. LAMAR, 

JOHN SCRYMSER, 

FRED'K LAOEY, 

CHAS. M. FRY, 

C. J. LEIGH, 

JOHN H. MORRISON, 

WM. T. COLEMAN, 

JAS. R. LOTT, 

G. C. WOODHULL, 



WM. KUMBEL, 
WM. S. DUNHAM, 
R. H. LOWRY, 
JOHN LAID LAW, 
RALPH KING, 
J. C. WHITWELL, 
GEO. G. SAMPSON, 
B. F. BRITTAN, 
GEO. L. SAMPSON, 
WM. 0. MASSIE, 



HENRY SHELDON. 



Gentlemen : '■ 

I submit the manuscript of my discourse to your disposal ; 
and pray that God will make it instrumental .in" accomplishing all 
the good you anticipate from its publication. With many thanks 
for your expressions of personal regard, 

I am, truly, your servant, for Christ's sake, 

HENRY J. YAN DYKE. 
To Moesrs. Soutter, Coleman and others. 



SERMON. 



1 TIMOTHY VI, 1-5. 

1. Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all 
honor, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed. 

2. And they that have believing masters, let them not despise them, because they are 
brethren ; but rather do them service, because they are faithful and beloved, partakers 
of the benefit. These things teach and exhort. 

3. If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness ; 

4. He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strife of words, 
whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, 

5. Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the trtith, suppos- 
ing that gain is godliness : from such withdraw thyself. 

I propose to discuss the character and influence of Abolitionism. 
With this view, I have selected a text from the Bible, and purpose 
to adhere to the letter and spirit of its teaching. We acknowledge, 
in this place, but one standard of morals — but one authoritative 
and infallible rule of faith and practice ; for we are Christians 
here ; not blind devotees, to bow down to the dictation of any man 
or church ; not heathen philosophers, to grope our way by the 
feeble glimmerings of the light of nature ; not modern infidels, to 
appeal from the written law of God to the corrupt and fickle tri- 
bunal of reason and humanity; but Christians, on whose banner 
is inscribed this sublime challenge : — " To the law and to the tes- 
timony ; if they speak not according to this word, it is because 
there is no light in them." 

Let me direct your special attention to the language of our text. 
There is no dispute among commentators, there is no room for 
dispute, as to the meaning of the expression, " servants under the 
yoke." Even Mr Barnes, who is himself a distinguished Aboli- 
tionist, and has done more, perhaps, than any other man in this 
country to propagate Abolition doctrines, admits that " the addi- 
tion of the phrase 'under the yoke,' shows imdoubtedly that it 
{i. e., the original ■word, doulos) is to be understood here of slavery."* 

* Mr. Barnes adopts a most extraordinary method to avoid the force of the precept 
■which commands slaves who have believing masters to " do them xcrvicc, because they 
are faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit.'''' He says: " The passage before us 
only proves that Paul considered that a man who was a slaveholder niiglU be converted, 



Let me quote another testimony on this point from can eminent 
Scotch divine. I mean Dr. McKnight, whose Exposition of the 
Epistles is a standard work in Great Britain and in this country, 



and be spoken of as a believer or a Christian. Many have been converted in similar 
circumstances, as many have been in the practice of all other khids of iniquity. What 
was their duty after their conversion, was another question ; and what was the duty of 
tlieir servants or slaves, was another question still." 

Ao-ain he says : "The passage does not teach that a man can be a Christian, and con- 
timie to hold others in bondage. It does not teach that he ought to be considered as 
maintaining a good standing in the church if he continues to be a slaveholder. The 
fact that a man'misht l^e converted who was a slaveholder, no more proves that it would 
be right and desirable that he should continue that relation, than tlie fact that Saul of 
Tarsus became a Christian when engaged in persecution proves that it would have been 
right for him to continue in that business, or than the conversion oi' the Ephesiaus, who 
used ' curious arts,' proved that it would have been proper for them to continue in that 
employment. Men who are doing wrong, are converted in order to turn them /com that 
course" of life, not to justifv them i7i it." Now, in visw of these extracts, I have three re- 
marks to make. (1.) They illustrate the power of fanaticism to imbitter the heart. 
Mr. Barnes well knew when he wrote these passages, that multitudes of the noblest and 
holiest men of this land have been, and are, slaveholders— that many of the founders of 
our government, with Washington at their head, were slaveholders— that there are now 
in our Southern States thousands of Christian masters who give every Scriptural evidence 
of piety ; and yet in a way that is all the more severe, because of its quiet and seemingly 
gentle "^manner, he teaches that slaveholding is a crime on a par with the imposture of 
the Ephesian sorcerers, with the slaughter of Saul the persecutor, a crime so obvious 
and enormous that a convert irom heathenism, without any inspired instruction upon 
the subject, at once, and instinctively, abandoned it. (2.) These extracts illustrate most 
pitiably how fanaticism warps the liuman intellect. The inspired Apostje commands 
that slaves ivho have believinc/ masters (not masters who anight become believers, as Mr. 
Barnes, with an amazing ingenuity, intimates, but helieving masters — masters who had been 
converted) sfiould do them service. And why '? Because they are " faithful and beloved, 
partakers of the benefit." Because these masters had been converted, were beloved of 
God, were faithful in the discharge of their social duties, were partakers of the benefits 
of Divine grace— therefore, their slaves were to be the more obedient and respectful in 
their deportment. Now does not any one see that such a precept contemj)lates the con- 
timiance of the relation between the Christian master and his slaves ? Would Paul so 
stultify himself as to give commandments for the regulation of that relation, based upon 
the fact of the master's conversion, if he had expected and known this fact would in- 
stantly dissolve the relation itself? When he says, " Children, obey your parents in the 
Lord," does he not imply that the parental relation is to be continued? And so when, 
in the very same passage, (Ephesians vi, 1-5.) he says, "Servants, {douloi,^ slaves,) be 
obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh," does he not intimate, in 
the strongest form, that he expects that relation to continue ? 

(3.) These passages cast an imputation upon the integrity and candor of the great 
Apostle. I do not say Mr. Barnes meant such an imputation : I speak of the effect of 
such interpretations upon those who imbibe their spirit. Mr. B. puts slaveholding on a 
level with " all other kinds of iniquity," and indicates his estimate of its guilt by choosing 
persecution and sorcery to illustrated. Very well, then; if this be true, Paul might 
treat "all other kinds of iniquity" in the same way. To be consistent, he should have 
said: " Sorcerers, use your curious arts and practice your impostures in a Christian way. 
Persecutors, when you" hale men and women, and breathe out threatcnings and slaughter 
against the Church^ see to it that you strangle and beat and kill the saints in the most 
gentle and tender manner. Adulterers, give to your paramours that which is just. Adul- 
teresses, be obedient and submissive to those whom you serve. Men who go down from 
Jerusalem to Jericho, do not despi.se the thieves among whom you fall, for they 'are 
faithful and beloved, ])artakers of the benefit.' " Who does not see the gross impiety of 
attributing sucli teaching to the great Apostle? But upon whom is this impiety charge- 
able ? Let the text of this discourse answer the <iuestion. Let those who teach that 
Paul held l)ack the truth in regard to an enormous crime, answer to their own conscience, 
and to the distracted country which they have embroiled in fraternal strife, by their uu- 
scriptural dogmas. 



and whose associations must exempt him from all suspicion of 
pro-slavery prejudices. He introduces his exposition of this chap- 
ter with the following exj^lanation : — " Because the law of Moses 
(Exodus xxi, 2) allowed no Israelite to be made a slave for life 
without his own consent, the Judaizing teachers, to allure slaves 
to their party, taught that under the gospel, likewise, involuntary 
slavery is unlawful. This doctrine the Apostle condemned here, 
as in his other Epistles, (1 Cor. vii, 20 ; Col. iii, 22 ; Eph. vi, 
5,) by enjoining Christian slaves to honor and obey their masters, 
whether they were believers or unbelievers, and by assuring Tim- 
oth}^ that if any person taught otherwise, he opposed the whole- 
some precepts of Jesus Christ, and the doctrine of the gospel, which 
in all points is conformable to godliness or sound morality, and 
was pufted up with pride, without possessing any true knowledge 
either of the Jewish or Christian revelation." Our learned Scotch 
friend then goes on to expound the passage in the following para- 
phrase, which we commend to the prayerful attention of all whom 
it may concern : — 

" Let whatever Christian slaves are under the yoke of unbelievers pay their 
own masters all respect and obedience, that the character of God whom we 
worship may not be calumniated, and the doctrine of the gospel may not be evil 
spoken of, as tending to destroy the political rights of mankind. And those 
Christian slaves who have believing masters, let them not despise them, fancying 
that they are their equals because they are their brethren in Christ ; for, though 
all Christians are equal as to religious privileges, slaves are inferior to their mas- 
ters in station. Wherefore, let them serve their masters more diligently, because 
they who enjoy the benefit of their service are believers and beloved of God. 
These things teach, and exhort the brethren to practice them. If any one teach 
differently, by affirming that, under the gospel, slaves are not bound to serve their 
mas<;ers, but ought to be made free, and does not consent to the wholesome com- 
mandments which are our Lord Jesus Christ's, and to the doctrine of the gospel, 
which in all points is conformable to true morality, he is puffed up with pride, 
and knoweth nothing either of the Jewish or the Christian revelations, though he 
pretends to have great knowledge of both ; but is distempered in his mind about 
idle questions and debates of words, which afford no foundation for such a doctrine, 
but are the source of envy, contention, evil-speaking, unjust suspicion that the 
truth is not sincerely maintained, keen disputings carried on contrary to con- 
science, by men wholly corrupted in their minds and destitute of the true doctrine 
of the gospel, who reckon whatever produces most money is the best re!i"-ion. 
From all such impious teachers withdraw thyself, and do not dispute with tliem." 



G 

The text, as tlius expounded by an American Abolitionist and 
a Scotcli divine, (whose testimony need not be confirmed bj quo- 
tations from all the other commentators,) is a prophecy written 
for these days, and wonderfally applicable to our present circum- 
stances. It gives us a life-like picture of Abolitionism in its prin- 
ciples, its spirit and its practice, and furnishes us plain instruction 
in regard to our duty in the premises. Before entering upon the 
discussion of the doctrine, let us define the terms employed. By 
Abolitionism, we mean the principles and measures of Abolition- 
ists. And what is an Abolitionist ? He is one who believes that 
slaveholding is sin, and ought therefore to be abolished. This is 
the fundamental, the characteristic, the essential principle of Abo- 
litionism — that slaveholding is sin — that holding men in invol- 
untary servitude is an infringement upon the rights of man, a 
heinous crime in the sight of God. A man may believe, on politi- 
cal or commercial grounds, Ihat slavery is an undesirable system, 
and that slave labor is not the most profitable ; he may have 
various views as to the rights of slaveholders under the constitu- 
tion of the country : he may think this or that law upon the 
statute books of Southern States is wrong ; but this does not con- 
stitute him an Abolitionist ; to be entitled to this name, he must 
believe that slaveholding is morally wrong. The alleged sinfulness 
of slaveholding, as it is the characteristic doctrine, so it is the 
strength of Abolitionism in all its ramified and various forms. 
It is by this doctrine that it lays hold upon the hearts and con- 
sciences of men, that it comes as a disturbing force into our eccle- 
siastical and civil institutions, and by exciting religious animosity, 
(which all histor}^ proves to be the strongest of human passions,) 
imparts a peculiar intensity to every contest into which it enters. 
And 3'ou will perceive it is just here that Abolitionism presents a 
proper subject for discussion in the pulpit : for it is one great pur- 
pose of the Bible, and therefore one great duty of God's ministers 
in its exposition, to show what is sin and what is not. 

Those who hold the doctrine that slaveholding is sin, and ought 
therefore to be abolished, differ very much in the extent to which 
they reduce their theory to practice. In some this faith is almost 
wdthout works. They content themselves with only voting in such 
a way as in their judgment will best promote the ultimate triumph of 



their views. Otliers stand off at what they suppose a safe distance, 
as Shimei did when he stood on an opposite hill to curse King 
David, and rebuke the sin, and denounce Divine j udgments upon 
die sinner. Others, more practical, if not more prudent, go into 
the very midst of the alleged wickedness, and teach '• servants 
under the yoke" that they ought not to count their own masters 
worthy of all honor — that liberty is their inalienable right — which 
they should maintain, if necessary, even by the shedding of blood. 
Now, it is not for me to decide who, of all these, are the truest to 
their own principles. It is not for me to decide whether the man 
who preaches this doctrine in brave words, amid applauding mul- 
titudes in the city of Brooklyn, or the one who, in the stillness of 
the night, and in the face of the law's ten'ors, goes to practice the 
preaching at Harper's Ferry, is the most consistent Abolitionist, 
and the most heroic man. It is not for me to decide which is the 
most important part of a tree ; and if the tree be poisonous, which 
is the most injurious, the root, or the branches, or the fruit. But 
I am here to-night, in God's name, and by his help, to show that 
this tree of Abolitionism is e^•^l, and only evil — root and branch, 
flower, and leaf, and fruit ; that it springs from, and is nourished 
by, an utter rejection of the Scriptm-es ; that it produces no real 
benefit to the enslaved, and is the fruitful source of division and 
strife, and infidelity, in both Church and State. I have four dis- 
tinct propositions on the subject to maintain — four theses to nail 
up over this pulpit, and defend with " the word of God, which is 
the sword of the Spirit.'' 

I. — Abolitionism has no foundation in the Scriptures. 

II. — Its principles have been promulgated chiefly by misrepre- 
sentation and abuse. 

III.— It leads, in multitudes of cases, and by a logical process, 
to utter infidelity. 

IV.— It is the chief cause of the strife that agitates, and the 
danger that threatens, our country. 

I. — ABOLITIONISM HAS NO FOUNDATION IN SCRIPTURE. 

Passing by the records of the patriarchal age, and wai^dng the 
question as to those servants in Abraham's family who, in the 
simple but expressive language of Scripture, " were bought with 



his money,'' let us come at once to the tribunal of that law which 
God promulgated amid the solemnities of Sinai. What said the 
law and the testimony to that peculiar people over whom God 
ruled, and for whose institutions He has assumed the respon- 
sibility ? The answer is in the twentj^-fifth chapter of Leviticus, 
in these words : — 

" And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor and be sold unto 
thee, thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bond-servant ; but as a hired ser- 
vant and a sojourner he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of 
jubilee, and then shall he depart from thee, both he and his children with him." 

So far, you will observe, the law refers to the children of Israel, 
who by reason of poverty were reduced to servitude. It was 
their right to be free at the year of jubilee, ttnless they chose to 
remain in perpetual bondage ; for which case provision is made in 
other and distinct enactments.* But not so with slaves of foreign 
birth. There was no year of jubilee provided for them.f For 
what says the law ? Eead the forty-fourth to forty-sixth verses of 
the same chapter. 

" Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids which thou shalt have shall be of the 
heathen that are round about you. Of them shall ye buy bondmen and bond- 
maids. Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you — 
of them shall ye buy and of their families that are with you, which they beget 
in your land ; and they shall be your possessioi%. And ye shall take them as an 
inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them as a possession ; they 
shall be your bondmen forever." 

There it is, plainly written in the Divine law. No legislative 
enactment, no statute framed by legal skill, was ever more explicit 



* Exodus xxi, 5, 6 : " And if the servant (i. e., the Hehreto servant, as the context 
shows) shall plainly say, I love iny master, my wife, and my children ; I will not go 
out free : then his master shall bring him unto the judges ; he shall also bring him to 
the door or unto the door-post ; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl ; 

ANn HE SHALL SERVE HIM FOREVER." 

f The Abolitionists have blown this jubilee trumpet with a zeal worthy of a better 
cause. They have insisted that under the Levitical economy slaves could only be held 
for fifty years. Now, inasmuch as the average of human life is somewhere between 
thirty and foi'ty years, some, at least, of these slaves, according to the interpretation of 
the Abolitionists themselves, must have ended their days in bondage. But the fact is, 
as any one may see by a candid reading of the twenty-tilth chapter of Leviticus, the year 
of jubilee had no reference to bondmen of foreign birth, buL^only to Hebrew landowners 
who were " waxen poor and fallen in decay." 



9 

and incapable of perversion. When the Abolitionist tells me that 
slaveholding is sin, in the simplicity of my faith in the Holy 
Scriptures, I point him to this sacred record, and tell him, in all 
candor, as my text does, that his teaching blasphemes the name 
of God and His doctrine. "When he begins to dote about ques- 
tions and strifes of words, appealing to the Declaration of Inde- 
clependence, and asserting that the idea of property in men is an 
enormity and a crime, I still hold him to the record, saying, " Ye 
shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to in- 
herit them for a possession." "When he waxes warm, as he al- 
ways does if his opponent quote Scripture, (which is the great test 
to try the spirits whether they be of God — the very spear of Ithu- 
riel to reveal their true character) — when he gets angry, and 
begins to pour out his evil surmisings and abuse upon slave- 
holders, I obey the precept which says, " from such withdraw thy- 
self," comforting myself with this thought : that the wisdom of 
God is wiser than men, and the kindness of God kinder than men. 
Philosophers may reason, and reformers may rave till doomsday ; 
they never can convince me that God, in the Levitical law, or in 
any other law, sanctioned sin ; and as I know, from the plain pas- 
sage I have quoted, and many more like it, that he did sanction 
slaveholding among his ancient people, I know, also, by the logic 
of that faith which believes the Bible to be His word, that slave- 
holding is not sin. 

There are men, even among professing Christians, and not a few 
ministers of the gospel, who answer this argument from the Old 
Testament Scriptures, by a simple denial of their authority. They 
do not tell us how God could ever or anj'where countenance that 
which is morally wrong, but they content themselves with saying 
that the Levitical law is no rule of action for us ; and they appeal 
from its decisions to what they consider the higher tribunal of the 
gospel.* Let us, therefore, join issue with them before the bar of 

* Some years since, Dr. Wayland publicly asserted that the New Testament is tin 
only and svfficient rule of faith for Christians. The editors of the New-York Observer 
challenged this statement ; and, as I have been informed, the late Dr. James Alexander 
oflFered to debate the question in the columnsof that journal. Dr. Wayland prudently 
declined the discussion, promising, however, that he would, at a convenient season, 
explain and defend his views. The promised explanation has not yet appeared. 



10 

tlie Kew Testament Scriptures. Here tliere is no lack of witnesses 
in tlie case. It is a historic trutli, acknowledged on all hands, 
that at the advent of Jesus Christ slavery existed all over the 
civilized world, and was intimately interwoven with its social and 
civil institutions. In Judea, in Asia Minor, in Greece, in all the 
countries where the Saviour or his Apostles preached the gospel, 
slaveholding was just as common as it is to-day in South 
Carolina. It is not alleged by any one, or, at least, by any 
one having any pretensions to scholarship or candor, that the 
Roman laws regulating slavery were even as mild as the very 
worst statutes which have been passed upon the subject in modern 
times. It will not be denied by any honest and well-informed 
man, that modern civilization and the restraining influences of 
the gospel have shed ameliorating influences upon the relation 
between master and slave, which were utterl}^ unknown at the ad- 
vent of Christianity. And how did Jesus and his Apostles treat 
this subject? Masters and slaves met them at every step in their 
missionary work, and were present in every audience to which 
they preached. The Eoman law, which gave the full power 
of life and death into the master's hand, was familiar to them ; and 
all the evils connected with the system surrounded them every 
day, as obviously as the light of heaven. And yet, it is a remark- 
able fact," which the Abolitionist does not, because he can not 
deu}^, that the New Testament is utterly silent in regard to the 
alleged sinfulness of slaveholding. In all the instructions of the 
Saviour ; in all the reported sermons of the inspired Apostles ; in all 
the epistles they w^ere moved by the Holy Spirit to write, for the in- 
struction of coming generations — there is not one distinct and ex- 
plicit denunciation of slaveholding, nor one precept requiring the 
master to emancipate his slaves. Every acknowledged sin is 
openly and repeatedly condemned, and in unmeasured terms. 
Drunkenness and adultery, theft and murder — all the moral wrongs 
which ever have been known to afflict society, are forbidden 
by name; and yet, according to the teaching of Abolitionism, 
this greatest of all sins — this sum of all villainies — is never 
spoken of except in respectful terms. How can this be accounted 
for? 



11 

Let Dr. Wayland, whose work on moral science is taiigiit in. 
many of our schools, answer this question ; and let parents whose., 
children are studying that book, diligently consider his answer. 
I quote from "Wa3dand's Moral Science, page 213 : — 

" The gospel was designed not for one race or for one time, but for all races 
and for all times. It looked not to the abolition of slavery for that age alone, 
but for its universal abolition. Hence, the important object of its Author was 
to gain for it a lodgment in every part of the known world, so that, by its uni- 
versal diffusion among all classes of society, it might, quietly and peacefully, 
modify and subdue the ev.I passions of men. In this manner alone could its 
object — a universal moral re solution — have been accomplished. For if it had for- 
bidden the evil, instead of subverting the principle ; if it had proclaimed the un- 
lawfulness of slavery, and taught slaves to resist the oppression of their masters, 
it would instantly have arrayed the two parties in deadly hostility throughout 
the civilized world ; its announcement would have been the signal of servile war, 
and the very name of the Christian religion would have been forgotten amidst 
the agitation of universal bloodshed. The fact, under these circumstances, that 
the gospel does not forbid slavery, affords no reason to suppose that it does not 
mean to prohibit it." 

We pause not now to comment upon the admitted fact that the 
gospel does not forhid slavery, and that Jesus Christ and his Apos- 
tles pursued a course entirely difl^rent from that adopted by the 
Abolitionists, including the learned author himself; nor to inquire 
whether the teaching of Abolitionism is not as likely to produce 
strife and bloodshed in these days as in the first ages of the church. 
What we now call attention to, and protest against, is the imputa- 
tion here cast upon Christ and his Apostles. Do you believe the 
Saviour sought to insinuate his religion into the earth by conceal- 
ino- its real design, and preserving a profound silence in regard to 
one of the very worst sins it came to destroy ? Do you believe that 
when he healed the centurion's servant, (whom every honest com- 
mentator admits to have been a slave,*) and pronounced that 

* We know the centurion's servant was a slave, not only from the position and na- 
tionality of the master, but from the very name given in the original to the servant. 
" Doulos" is derived from the verb deo, to bind, and always signifies a bondman. 

Dr. Robinson, whose Lexicon is the great standard upon such questions, says : " The 
doidos was never a hired servant, the latter being called by another Tiwaxe—misthios, or 
misthoton:' This testimony is confirmed by every authority, ancient and modern, Eurd- 
pean and American, except a Uttle clique of Abolitionists, who, to sustam their dogma, 
would not only wrest the Scriptures, but overturn the very foundations of the Greek 
language. 



12 

precious eulogy iipon the master, " I liave not seen so great faith 
in Israel" — do you believe that Jesus suffered that man to live on 
in sin because he deprecated the consequences of preaching Aboli- 
tionism ? When Paul stood upon Mars' Hill, surrounded by ten 
thousand times as many slaveholders as there were idols in the city, 
do you believe he kept back any part of the requirements of the 
gospel because he was afraid of a tumult among the people? "VVe 
ask these Abolition philosophers whether, as a matter of fact, idola- 
try, and the vices connected with it, were not even more intimately 
interwoven with the social and civil life of the Eoman empire than 
slavery was ? Did the Apostles abstain from preaching against 
idolatry? Xay, who does not know that by denouncing this sin 
they brought down upon themselves the whole power of the Eoman 
empire ? Nero covered the Christian mart3^rs with pitch, and lighted 
up the city with their burning bodies, just because they would not 
withhold or compromise the truth in regard to the worship of idols. 
In the light of that fierce persecution it is a profane trifling for 
Dr. AVayland, or any other man, to tell us that Jesus or Paul held 
back their honest opinions of slavery in order to avoid " a ser- 
vile war, in wliich the very name of the Christian religion would 
have been forgotten." The name of the Christian religion is not 
so easily forgotten ; nor are God's great purposes of redemption 
capable of being defeated by an honest declaration of His truth 
everywhere and at all times. And yet this philosophy, so dishonor- 
ing to Christ and his Apostles, is moulding the character of our 
young men and women. It comes into our schools, and mingles 
with the very life-blood of future generations the sentiment that 
Christ and his Apostles held back the truth, and suffered sin to 
go unrebuked to avoid the wrath of man. And all this to main- 
tain, at all hazards, and in the face of the Saviour's example to the 
contrary, the unscriptural dogma that slaveholding is sin. 

But it must be observed, in this connection, that the Apostles 
went much further than to abstain from preaching against slave- 
holding. They admiiied slaveholders to the communion of the church. 
In our text, masters are acknowledged as " brethren, faithful and 
beloved, partakers of the benefit." If the New Testament is to be 
received as a faithful history, no man was ever rejected by the 



13 

apostolic cliurch upon the ground that he owned slaves. If he 
abused his power as a master, if he availed himself of the authority 
conferred by the Roman law to commit adultery, or murder, or 
cruelty, he was rejected for these crimes, just as he would be re- 
jected now for similar crimes from any Christian church in our 
Southern States."' 

If parents abused or neglected their children they were censured, 
not for having children, but for not treating them properly. , And 
so with the slaveholder. It was not the owning of slaves, but the 
manner in which he fulfilled the duties of his station, that made 
him a subject for church discipline. The mere fact that he was a 
slaveholder no more subjected him to censure than the mere fact 
that he was a father or a husband. It is, obviously, upon the 
recognized lawfulness of the relation that all the precepts regulat- 
ing the reciprocal duties of that relation are based. 

These precepts are scattered all through the inspired epistles. 
There is not one command or exhortation to emancipate the slave. 
The Apostle well knew that for the present emancipation would 
be no real blessing to him. But the master is exhorted to be kind 
and considerate, and the slave to be obedient, that so they might 
preserve the unitv of that church in which there is no distinction 
between Greek or Jew, male or female, bond or free. Oh, if min- 
isters of the gospel in this land and age had but followed 
Paul as he followed Christ, and, instead of hurling anathemas and 
exciting wrath against slaveholders, had sought only to bring both 
master and slave to the fountain of Emanuel's blood ; if the agen- 
cies of the blessed gospel had only been suffered to work their 
way quietly, as the light and dew of the morning, into the struc- 
ture of sc>ciety, both North and South — how different would have 
been the position of our country this day before God ! How dif- 



* One of the grossest sins of Abolitionism, and one chief root of the bitterness that 
has sprung up between the North and the South, is its persistent slander on this subject. 
For example, some years ago it was asserted, and reiterated by Abolition journals and 
lecturers that a minister at'the South, without injury to his character, had tied up his 
slave on Sabbath morning, and, having inflicted a cruel punishment, left him suspended, 
while he went to church to preach and administer the Lord's supper, and then returned 
to inflict additional stripes upon his lacerated victim. This is but a specimen. In re- 
gard to crime.s against chastity, the Southern churches have been shamefully slandered. 
What wonder that Christian mothers, and even ministers of the gospel, are roused to a 
revolutionary indignation by such abuse ? 



14 

ferent would have been the privileges enjoyed by the poor black 
man s soul, which, in this bitter contest, has been too much ne- 
glected and despised. Then there would have been no need to 
have converted our churches into military barracks for collecting 
fire-arms to carry on war upon a distant frontier. No need for a 
sovereign State to execute the fearful penalty of the law upon the 
invader for doing no more than honestly to carry out the teaching 
of Abolition preachers, who bind heavy burdens, and grievous 
to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders, while they touch 
them not with one of their fingers. No need for the widow and 
the orphan to weep in anguish of heart over those cold graves, for 
whose dishonor and desolation God will hold the real authors 
resj^onsible. No occasion or pretext for slaveholding States to pass 
such stringent laws for the punishment of the secret incendiary 
and the prevention of servile war. 

I shall not attempt to show what will be the condition of the 
African race in this country when the gospel shall have brought 
all classes under its complete dominion. What civil and social 
relations men will sustain in the times of millennial glory, I do not 
know. I cordially incline to the current opinion of our church that 
slavery is permitted and regulated by the Divine law, under both 
the Jewish and Christian dispensations, not as the final destiny of 
the enslaved, but as an important and necessary jDrocess in their 
transition from heathenism to Christianity — a wheel in the great 
machinery of Providence, by which the final redemption is to be 
accomplished. However this may be, one thing I know, and 
every Abolitionist might know, if he would, that there are Chris- 
tian families at the South in which a patriarchal fidelity and affec- 
tion subsist between the l:)ond and the free, and where slaves are 
better fed and clothed and instructed, and have a better oppor- 
tunity for salvation, than the majority of laboring people in the 
city of New- York. If tlie tongue of Abolitionism had only kept 
silence th(,>se twenty years past, the number of such families would 
be tenfold as great. Fanaticism at the North is one chief stumbling- 
block in the way of the gospel at the South. This is one great griev- 
ance that presses to-day upon the hearts of oui" Christian brethren 
in the Southern States. This, in a mcasiire, explains why such 



15 

toen as Dr. Tliornwell, of Soutli Carolina, and Dr. Palmer,* of NeW 
Orleans — men whose genius and learning and piety would adorn 
any state or station — are willing to secede from tHe Union. They 
feel that the influence of the Christian ministry is hindered, and 
their power to do good to both master and slave crippled, by 
the constant agitations of Abolitionism in our national councils, 
and the incessant turmoil excited by the unscriptural dogma that 
slaveholding is sin. They hop'e that under some other govern- 
ment they may have that peace for the prosecution of their Mas- 
ter's work, which the constitution of the United States has hitherto 
failed to secure for them. Whatever I may think of secession as 
a remedy for the evils complained of, in my heart I do not blame 
them. My soul is knit to such men with the sym})ath3' of Jona- 
than for David. Whatever be the result of this contest, the union 
between their hearts and mine, cemented by the word and Spirit 
of God, can never be dissolved. Earth and hell cannot dissolve 
it. Though my lot is cast in a colder clime, yet in the outgoings 
of that warm affection to which sj)ace is nothing, I will ever say, 
" Entreat me not to leave thee, for your people shall be my people. 



* Since the delivery of my sermon, I have received a copy of Dr. Palmer's eloquent 

Thanksgiving discourse, from which I make the following extract : — 

" The worst foes of the black race are those who have intermeddled on their behalf. 
We know better than others, that every attribute of their character fits them for depen- 
dence and servitude. By nature the most affectionate and loyal of all races beneath 
the sun, they are also the most helpless ; and no calamity can befall them greater than 
the loss of that protection they enjoy under this patriarchal system. Indeed the experi- 
ment has been grandly tried of precipitating them upon freedom which they know not 
how to enjoy ; and the dismal results are before us in statistics that astonish the world. 
With the fairest portions of the earth in their possession, and with the advantage of a 
long discipline as cultivators of the soil, their constitutional indolence has converted the 
most beautiful islands of the sea into a howling waste. It is not too much to say that if 
the South should, at this moment, surrender every slave, the wisdom of the entire world, 
united in solemn council, could not solve the question of their disposal. Their trans- 
portation to Africa, even if it were feasible, would be but the most refined cruelty ; they 
must perish with starvation before they could have time to relapse into their primitive 
barbarism. Their residence here, in the presence of the vigorous Saxon race, would be 
but the signal for their rapid extermination before they had time to waste away through 
listlessness, filth and vice. Freedom would be their doom ; and equally from both they 
call upon us, their providential guardians, to be protected. I know this argument will 
be scoffed abroad as the hypocritical cover thrown over our own cupidity and selfish- 
ness ; but every Southern master knows its truth and feels its power. My servant, 
whether born in my house or bought with my monej-, stands to me in the relation of a 
child. Though providentially owing me service, which, providentially, I am bound to 
exact, he is, nevertheless, my brother and my friend ; and I am to him a guardian and 
a father. He leans upon me for protection, for counsel, and for blessing ; and so long 
as the relation continues, no power but the power of almighty God, shall come between 
him and me. Were there no argument but this, it binds upon us the providential duty 
of preserving the relation that we may save him from a doom worse than death." 



16 

and your God my God ;'' and though we may be separated in 
body for a while by tlie dark gulf of political disunion, and by the 
absorbing strife for which every sound man at the North will soon 
be called upon to gird himself — the long, long rest of eternity, will 
afford abundant opportunity for the interchange of our mutual 
charities. 

II. — THE PRINCIPLES OF ABOLITIOX HAVE BEEN PROPAGATED 
CHIEFLY BY MISREPRESENTATIOX AXD ABUSE. 

Having no foundation in Scripture, it does not carr}" on its war- 
fare by Scripture weapons. Its prevailing spirit is fierce and 
proud, and its language is full of wrath and bitterness. Let me 
prove this by testimony from its own lips. I quote Dr. Channing, 
of Boston, whose name is a tower of strength to the Abolition 
cause, and whose memory is their continual boast. In a work 
published in the year 1836, I find the following words : — 

" The Abolitionists have done wrong, I believe ; nor is their wrong to be 
winked at because done fanatically or with good intentions ; for how much mis- 
chief may be wrought with good designs I They have fallen into the common 
error of enthusiasts, that of exaggerating their object, of feeling as if no evil ex- 
isted but that which they opposed, and as if no guilt could be compared with 
that of countenancing and upholding it. The tone of their newspapers, so far as 
I have seen them, has often been fierce, bitter and abusive. They have sent forth 
their orators, some of them transported with fiery zeal, to sound the alarm 
acrainst slavery through the laud, to gather together young and old, pupils from 
schools, females hardly arrived at years of discretion, the ignorant, the excit- 
able, the impetuous, and to organize these into associations for the battle against 
oppression. Yery unhappily, they preached their doctrine to the colored people, 
and collected them into societies. To this mixed and excitable multitude, minute, 
heart-rending descriptions of slavery were given in piercing tones of passion ; and 
slaveholders were held up as monsters of cruelty and crime. The Abolitionist, 
indeed, proposed to convert slaveholders ; and for this end he approached them 
with vituperation, and exhausted on them the vocabulary of abuse. And he has 
reaped as he sowed." 

Such is the testimony of Dr. Channing, given in the year 1886. 
What would he have thought and said if he had lived until the year 
1860, and seen this little stream, over whose infant violence he 
lamented, swelling into a torrent and flooding the land ? 

Abolitionism is abusive in its persistant misrepresentation of the 



17 

legal principles involved in the relation between master and slave. 
Its teachers reiterate, in a thousand exciting forms, the asser- 
tion that the idea of property in man blots out his manhood and 
degrades him to the level of a brute or a stone. '' Domestic 
slavery," saj's Dr. "Wayland, in his work on Moral Science, "sup- 
poses, at best, that the relation between master and slave is not 
that which exists between man and man, but is a modification, at 
least, of that wiiich exists between man and the brutes." Do not 
these Abolitionist philosophers know, that, according to the laws 
of every civilized country on earth, a man has property in his 
children, and a woman has property in her husband ? The stat- 
utes of the State of New- York, and of ever}^ other Northern State, 
recognize and protect this property, and our courts of justice have 
repeatedly assessed its value. If a man is killed on a railroad, his 
wife may bring suit and recover damages for the pecuniary loss 
she has suffered. If one man entice away the daughter of another, 
and marry her, while she is still under age, the father may bring a 
civil suit for damages for the loss of that child's services, and the 
pecuniary compensation is the only redress the law provides.* 
Thus the common law of Christendom, and the statutes of our own 
State, recognize property in man. In what does that property 
consist? Simply in such services as a man or a child may loroperly 
he reijuired to render. This is all that the ^Levitical law, or any 
other law, means when it says, " Your bondmen shall be your pos- 
session, or property, and an inheritance for your children.'' The 
property consists, not in the right to treat the sla\-e like a brute, 
but simply in a legal claim for such services as a man in that po- 
sition may properly be required to render. f And yet Abolition- 



* If the law went further, as it ought to, and punished the minister who performs 
the marriage ceremony, the offence would not be so often repeated in this community. 

f With a manifest design to prejudice the student against the idea of property in 
man, Dr. Wayland adopts a marvelous " Definition of the right of Property." Let 
Christian parents and teachers look at it. " The abstract right of property is the right 
to UHc somefhing in such manner as I choose. But, inasmuch as this right of use is 
common to all men, and as one may choose to use his i)roperty in such a way as to de- 
prive his neighbor of this or of some other right, the right to use as I choose is limited 




that so, Dr. Wayland ? Has a man a right, if he chooses, to take his horse into the 
woods,' where his neighbors will not be disturbed by his cruelty, and there torture or 



18 

ists, in tlie face of tlie Divine law, persist in denouncing tlie very 
relation between master and slave " as a modification, at least, of 
tliat wliicli exists between man and tlie brutes." 

This, however, is not the worst or most prevalent form which 
their abusive spirit assumes. Their mode of arguing the question 
of slaveholding, by a pretended appeal to facts, is a tissue of mis- 
representation from beginning to end. Let me illustrate my mean- 
ing by a parallel case. Suppose I undertake to j^rove the wicked- 
ness of marriage, as it exists in the city of New- York. In this 
discussion suppose the Bible is excluded, or, at least, that it is not 
recognized as having exclusive jurisdiction in the decision of the 
question. My first appeal is to the statute law of the State. 

I show there enactments which nullify the law of God, and 
make divorce a marketable and cheap commodity. I collect the 
advertisements of your daily papers, in which lawj^ers offer to 
procure the legal separation of man and wife for a stipulated price, 
to say nothing, in this sacred place, of other advertisements which 
decency forbids me to quote. Then I turn to the records of our 
criminal courts, and find that every day some cruel husband beats 
his Avife, or some unnatural parent murders his child, or some dis- 
contented wife or husband seeks the dissolution of the marriage 
bond. In the next place, I turn to the orphan asylums and hospi- 
tals, and show there the miserable wrecks of domestic tyranny in 
wives deserted and children maimed by drunken parents.* In the 
last place, I go through our streets, and into our tenement houses, 
and count the thousands of ragged children, who, amid ignorance 
and filth, are training for the prison and gallows. 

Summing all these facts together, I put them forth as tlie fruits 
of marriage in the city of New- York, and a proof that the relation 

starve the poor beast? Does the master's clami to property in his servant involve a 
claim to use that servant just as he chooses, with no other restriction than tlie one you 
mention? No sir, the abstract ripjht of property, is the right to nse somr fliivg or per- 
son according to the nature of that tiling or person, and under all the restrictions ■which 
the Divine law imposes, which restrictions go much further than my neighbor's rights. 
This is Christian philosophy. Your definition would come with better grace from a 
heathen. 

* There is in the Brooklyn Orphan Asylum a little child who was thrown into 
the fire, and almost roasted to death, by its father. If that child had been a slave 
iti Charleston, how the sad story would have rung through the laiul ! ]}ut modern 
ohilanthropy has uo tears or shrieks to spare for ichitc children. 



19 

itself is sinful. If I were a novelist, and had written a book to 
lustrate tliis same doctrine, I would call tliis array of facts a 
" Key." In tliis key I say nothing about the sweet charities and 
affections that flourish in ten thousand homes, not a word about 
the multitude of loving-kindnesses that characterize the daily life 
of honest people, about the instruction and discipline that are 
training children at ten thousand firesides for usefulness here and 
glory hereafter ; — all this I ignore, and quote only the statute book, 
the newspapers, the records of criminal courts, and the miseries of 
the abodes of poverty. Now, what have I done ? I have not 
misstated or exaggerated a single fact. And yet am I not a fal- 
sifier and a slanderer of the deepest dye ? Is there a virtuous wo- 
man or an honest man in this city whose cheeks would not burn 
with indignation at my one-sided and injurious statements ? But 
this is just what Abolitionism has done in regard to slaveholding. 
It has undertaken to illustrate its cardinal doctrine in works of 
fiction ; and then, to sustain the creation of its fancy, has attempt- 
ed to underpin it with an accumulation of facts. These facts are 
collected in precisely the way I have described. The statute 
books of slaveholding States are searched, and every wrong en- 
actment collated, newspaper reports of cruelty and crime on the 
part of wicked masters are treasured up and classified, all the out- 
rages that have been perpetrated " by lewd fellows of the baser sort'' 
— of whom there are plenty, both North and South — are eagerly 
seized and recorded ; and this mass of vileness and filth, collected 
from the kennels and sewers of society, is put forth as a faithful 
exhibition of slaveholding. Senators in the forum, and ministers 
in the pulpit, distill this raw material into the more refined slander 
" that Southern society is essentially barbarous, and that slave- 
holding had its origin in hell." Legislative bodies enact and re- 
enact statutes which declare that slaveholding is such an enor- 
mous crime that if a Southern man, under the broad shield of the 
constitution, and with the decisions of the Supreme Court of the 
country in his hand, shall, come within their jurisdiction, and set 
up a claim to a fugitive slave, he shall be punished with a fine of 
$2,000 and fifteen years' imprisonment. And this method of ar- 
gument has continued until multitudes of honest Christian people 



20 

in this and other hands believe that slaveholding is the sin of sins, 
the sum of all villainies. Let me illustrate this b}' an incident in 
my own experience. A few years since I took from the centre- 
table of a Christian family in Scotland, by whom I had been most 
kindly entertained, a book entitled " Life and Manners in Ame- 
rica."' On the blank leaf was an inscription, stating that the book 
had been bestow^ed upon one of the children of the family, as a re- 
ward of diligence in an institution of learning. The frontispiece 
w^as a picture of a man of fierce countenance beating a naked wo- 
man. The contents of the book w^cre professedly compiled from 
the testimony of Americans upon the subject of slavery. I dare 
not quote in this place the extracts w^hich I made in my memo- 
randum. It will be sufficient to say that the book asserts, as un- 
doubted facts, that the banks of the Mississippi are studded with 
iron gallows for the punishment of slaves — that in the city of 
Charleston the bloody block on which masters cut off the hands 
of disobedient servants may be seen in the public squares, and 
that sins against chastity are common and unrebuked in profes- 
sedly Christian families. 

Now in my heart I did not feel angry at the author of that 
book, nor at the school-teacher who bestowed it upon his scholar ; 
for in Christian cliarit}' I gave them credit for honest}^ in the case. 
But standing there a stranger among the martj'r memories of that 
glorious land, to which my heart had so often made its pilgrim- 
ao-e, I did feel that you and I, and every man in America, w^as 
wronged by the revilers of their native land, who teach foreigners 
that hanging, and cutting off hands, and beating women, are the 
characteristics of our life and manners. 

But we need not go to foreign lands for proof that Abolitionism 
has carried on its warfare b}" the language of al )use. The annual 
meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society brings the evidence 
to our doors. We have been accustomed to laugh at these vernal 
exhibitions of fanaticism, not thinking, perhaps, that what was fun 
for us was working death to onr brethren Avhose propert}^ and re- 
putation w^e are bound to protect. The fact is, we have suffered a 
lire to 1)6 built in our midst, whose sparks have been scattered for 
and wide ; and now when the smoke of the conflagration comes 



21 

back to blind our eyes, and tlie lieat of it begins to scorcli our in- 
dustrial and commercial interests, it will not do for us to say that 
the utterances of that Society are the ravings of a fanatical and in ■ 
significant few ; foi- the men who comjDose it are honored in our 
midst with titles and offices. Its President is a Chief Justice 
of the State of New Jersey. The ministers who have thrown 
over its doings the sanction of our holy religion are quoted 
and magnified all over the land as the representative men of 
the age ; and the man who stood up in its deliberations in the 
year 1852, and exhausted the vocabulary of abuse upon the com- 
promise measures, and the great statesmen who framed them, is 
now a judge in our courts and the guardian of our lives and our 
property. 

It will, doubtless, be said that misrepresentation and abuse have 
not been confined, in the progress of this unhapjDy contest, to the 
Abolitionists of the North ; that demagogues and self'seeking men 
at the South have been violent and abusive, and that newspapers 
professedly in the interests of the South, with a spirit which can 
be characterized as little less than diabolical, have circulated every 
scandal in the most aggravated and irritating form. But suppose 
all this to be granted — what then ? Can Christian men justify or 
palliate the wrath and evil-speaking which are at their own doors 
by pointing to the retaliation which it has provoked from their 
neighbors ? If I were preaching to-day to a Southern audience, it 
would be my duty, and I trust God would give me grace to per- 
form it, to tell them of their sins in this matter. And especially 

would it be my privilege, as a minister of the gospel of peace a 

privilege from which no false views of manhood should prevent 
me — to exhort and beseech them as brethren. I would assure 
them that there are multitudes here who still cherish the memory 
of the battle-fields and council chambers where our fathers cement- 
ed this Union of States, and who will stand by the compact of that 
constitution to the utmost extremit}^ I would tell the thousands 
of Christian ministers, among whom are some of the brightest 
ornaments of the American pulpit, and the tens of thousands of 
Christian men and women, toward whom, while the love of Christ 
burns in me, my heart never can grow cold, that if they will 



22 

only be patient, and liope to the end, all Avrongs may yet be 
righted. Therefore, I would beseech them not to put a great gulf 
between us, and cut off the very opportunity for reconciliation 
upon an honorable basis, by a revolution whose end no human 
eye can see. But, then, I am not |)reaching at the South. I 
stand here, at one of the main fountain-heads of the abuse we have 
complained of 

I stand here to rebuke this sin, and exhort the guilty parties to 
repent and forsake it. It is magnanimous and Christlike for those 
from whom the first provocation came, to make the first concessions. 

The legislative enactments which are in open and acknowledged 
violation of the constitution, and whose chief design is to put a 
stio-ma upon slaveholding, must and will be repealed. Truth and 
justice will ultimately prevail ; and God's blessing, and the bless- 
ings of generations yet unborn, will rest upon that party, in this 
unhappy contest, who first stand forth to utter the language of con- 
ciliation, and profiler the olive-branch of peace. The great fear is, 
that the reaction will come too late ; hut sooner or later it luill 
come. Abolitionism ought to, and one day will, change the mode 
of its warfare, and adopt a new vocabulary. I believe in the lib- 
erty of the press, and in freedom of speech ; but I do not believe 
that any man has the right, before God, or in the eye of civilized 
law, to speak and publish what he pleases without regard to the 
consequences. AVith the conscientious convictions of our fellow- 
citizens, neither we, nor the law, have any right to interfere ; but 
the law ought to protect all men from the utterance of libelous 
words, whose only effect is to create division and strife. 

I trust and pray, and call upon you to unite with me in the 
supplication, that God would give Abolitionists repentance and a 
better mind, so that in time to come they may, at least, propagate 
their principles in decent and respectful language. 
III. — ABOLrnoxis]\[ leads, in multitudes of cases, and by a 

LOGICAL process, TO UTTER INFIDELITY. 

On this point I would not, and will not, be misunderstood. I 
do not say that Abolitionism is infidelity. I speak only of the 
tendencies of the system, as indicated in its avowed prineii^lcs and 
demonstrated in its })i-aetical fruits. 



23 

One of its avowed principles is, that it does not try slavery by 
the Bible ; but as one of its leading advocates has recently de- 
clared, it tries the Bible by the principles of freedom. It insists 
that the word of God must be made to support certain human 
opinions, or forfeit all claims upon our faith. That I may not be 
suspected of exaggeration on this point, let me quote, from the 
recent work of ]\[r. Barnes, a passage which may well arrest the 
attention of all thinking men : — 

'• There are great principles in our nature, as God has made us, which can 
never l^e set aside by any authority of a professed revelation. If a book 
claiming to be a revelation from God, by any fair interpretation, defended sla- 
very, or placed it on the same basis as the relation of husband and wife, parent 
and child, guardian and ward, such a book would not, and could not, be received 
by the mass of mankind as a Divine revelation." — Barnes on Slavery and the 
Church, Tp. 193. 

This assumption, that men are capable of judging beforehand 
what is to be expected in a Divme revelation, is the cockatrice's 
egg, from which, in all ages, heresies have been hatched. This is 
the sjDider's web which men have spun out of their own brains, and 
clinging to which, they have attempted to swing over the yawn- 
ing abyss of infidelity.* Alas, how many have fallen in, and been 
dashed to pieces ! When a man sets up the great principles of 
our nature (by which he alwa3's means his own preconceived 
opinions) as the supreme tribunal before which even the law of 

* It is not denied that man, as originally constituted by his Creator, was capable of 
discerning for himself between good and evil. Even since the fall, the law of God is 
still written in the heart, (Rom. ii, 3.,) and would be a sufficient guide, if there were 
nothing to blot and pervert it. But what says the Apostle in regard to the whole world 
who have not the Scriptures? "They have become vain in their imaginations, and 
their foolish heart is darlvened," &c., (Rom. i, 21-2.5.) What are the jmnciplcs by 
whicli, according to Mr. Barnes' theory, these men are to try " the authority of a sup- 
posed revelation ?" Their principles teach them that human sacrifices, and all kinds of 
uncleanness, are right. Must a supposed revelation conform to these principles in order 
to secure their acceptance of it ? 

Mr. Barnes well knows that in Christian lands the ablest and best men differ as to 
what are the principles of our nature. Who wiU assume to be the oracle on this sub- 
ject ? The Abolitionist will declare that hostilifi/ to slaveri/ upon moral grounds, is one 
of these principles. But the great mass of mankind, including just as wise and good 
men as he is, do not admit any such principle, and are not willing that he should be 
dictator in morals. Besides, this whole appeal to natural principles presents a fidse 
and deceitful issue. The Bible is admithd to be a Divine revelation. The simple ques- 
tion is, what does the Bible teach ? Mr. Barnes, while professedly expounding the 
Scriptures, finds certain texts, which, h\ every fair construction of words, seem to put 
God's sanction on slaveholdiug. From these texts he desires to extort a different mean- 
ing ; to justify which procedure, he appeals to the principles of our (i. e., his) nature. 



24 

God must be tried — when a man says " the Bible must teacli Abo- 
litionism, or I will not receive it,"' lie has already cut loose from 
the sheet-anchor of faith. True belief says, " Speak, Lord, thy 
servant waits to hear."' Abolitionism says, " Speak, Lord, but speak 
in accordance with the principles of human nature, or thy w^ord 
cannot be received by the great mass of mankind as a Divine 
revelation.'' The fruit of such principles is just what we might 
expect. Wherever the seed of Abolitionism has been sown broad- 
cast, a plentiful crop of infidelity has sprung up. In the com- 
munities where anti-slavery excitement has been most prevalent, 
the power of the gospel has invariably declined ; and when the 
tide of fanaticism begins to subside, the wrecks of church order 
and of Christian character have been scattered on the shore. I 
mean no disrespect to New England — to the good men who there 
stand by the ancient landmarks, and contend earnestly for the 
truth — nor to the illustrious dead whose praise is in all the 
churches ; but who does not know that the States in which Abo- 
litionism has achieved its most signal triumjDhs are at the same time 
the great strongholds of infidelity in the land ? I have often 
thought that if some of those old pilgrim fathers could come back, 
in the spirit and power of Elias, to attend a grand celebration at 
Plymouth rock, the}' might well preach on this text : — " If je 
were Abraham's children, je would do the works of Abraham.'" 
The effect of Abolitionism upon individuals is no less striking 
and mournful than its influence upon communities. It is a re- 
markable and instructive fact, and one at which Christian men 
would do well to pause and consider, that, in this country, all the 
prominent leaders of Abolitionism, outside of the ministry, have 
become avowed infidels ; and that all our notorious Abolition 
preachers have renounced the great doctrines of grace as they are 
taught in the standards of the reformed churches — have resorted 
to the most violent processes of intei'pretation to avoid the 
obvious meaning of })kain Scriptural texts, and ascribed to the 
Apostles of Christ principles from which piety and moral courage 
instinctively revolt. They make that to be sin whicli the Bible 
does not declare to be sin. The}^ denounce, in language such as 
the sternest prophets of the Law never employed, a relation which 



25 

Jesus and liis Apostles recognized and regulated. They seek to 
institute terms and tests of Christian communion utterly at va- 
riance with the organic law of the Church, as founded by its Divine 
Head ; and, attempting to justify this usurpation of Divine pre- 
rogatives by an a])peal from God's law to the dictates of fallen hu- 
man nature, they would setup a spiritual tyranny more odious and 
insufferable, because more arbitrary and uncertain in its decisions, 
than Popery itself. And as the tree is, so have its fruits been. It 
is not a theory, but a demonstrated fact, that Abolitionism leads 
to infidelity. Such men as Garrison, and Giddings, and Gerrit 
Smith, have yielded to the current of their own principles, and 
thrown the Bible overboard. Thousands of humbler men who 
listen to Abolition preachers, will go and do likewise. And 
whether it be the restraints of official position, or the 23re venting 
grace of God, that enables such preachers to row up the stream 
and regard the authority of Scripture in other matters, their in- 
fluence upon this one subject is all the more pernicious because 
they prophesy in the name of Christ. In this sincere and plain 
utterance of my deep convictions, I am only discharging my con- 
science toward the flock over which I am set. When the shep- 
herd seeth the wolf coming, he is bound to give warning. 

IV. — ABOLITIONISM IS THE CHIEF CAUSE OF THE STEIFE THAT 
AGITATES AND THE DANGER THAT THREATENS OUR COUNTRY. 

Here, as upon the preceding point, I will not be misunderstood. 
I am not here as the advocate or opponent of any political part}^ ; 
and it is no more than simple justice for me to say plainly, that I 
do not consider Republican and Abolitionist as necessarily synony- 
mous terms. There are tens of thousands of Christian men who 
voted with the successful party in the late election, who do not 
sympathize with the principles or aims of Abolitionism. Among 
these are some beloved members of my own flock, who will not 
hesitate a moment to put the seal of their approbation upon the 
doctrine of this discourse. And what is still more to the point, 
there seems to be sufiicient evidence that the man who has just 
been chosen to be the head of this nation is among the more con- 
servative and Bible-loving men of his party. We have no fears 

4 



20 

that if the new administration could be quietly inaugurated, it 
would or could Abolitionize the government. There are honest 
people enough in the Northern States to prevent such a result. 
But, then, while this is admitted, as a simple matter of truth and 
justice, it cannot be denied, on the other hand, that Abolitionism did 
enter with all its characteristic bitterness into the recent contest ; 
that the result never could have been accomplished without its 
assistance, and that it now appropriates the victory in wojds of 
ridicule and scorn that sting like a serpent. Let me give you, as 
a single specimen of the spirit in which Abolitionism has carried 
on its political warfare, an extract from a journal which claims to 
have a larger circulation than any other religious paper in the 
land. I quote from the New- York Independent^ of September, 
1856 :— 

" The people will not levy war nor inaugurate a revolution, even to relieve 
Kansas, until they have first tried what they can do by voting. If this peaceful 
remedy should fail to be applied this year then the people vi\\\ count the cost 
wisely, and decide for themselves boldly and firmly, which is the better way, to 
rise in arms and throw off a government worse than that of old King George, or 
endure it another four years, and then vote again." 

Such is the spirit — such the love to the constitution and Union 
of these States, with which this religious element has entered into 
and seeks to control our party politics. 

This passage is not quoted as an extraordinary one for the col- 
umns of the Independent, for that paper is accustomed to breathe 
out threateniugs and slaughter. It is but a fair illustration of the 
fierce spirit whicli this so-called religions journal infuses into the 
families where it is a weekly visitor, and of the opinions concern- 
ing the United States government it seeks to disseminate. The 
passage quoted has a special significance, however, in view of its 
date, September^ 1856. The opinions of the Editors appear to 
have undergone a wonderfal change in four years ; and forgetting 
tliat they have been the violent advocates, not only of disunion 
but of civil war, they have become loud in rebuking secession at 
the South. The genius of the constitution might well say to such 
defenders, " What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that 
tliou shouldst take mv covenant in thv mouth?" 



27 

But we deceive ourselves, if we suppose tliat our present dangers 
are of a birth so recent as 1856. As' the questions now before 
the country rise in their magnitude above all party interests, and 
ought at once to blot out all party lines, so their origin is found 
far back of all party organizations as they now exist. 

An article published twenty years ago in the Princeton Review^ 
contains this remarkable language : — 

" The opinion that slaveholding is itself a crime must operate to produce the 
disunion of the States and the division of all ecclesiastical societies in this coun- 
try. Just so far as this opinion operates, it will lead those who entertain it to 
submit to any sacrifices to carry it out and give it effect. We shall become two 
nations iu feeling, which must soou render us two nations in fact." 

These words are wonderfullj- prophetic, and they who read the 
signs of the times must see that the period of their fulfillment 
draws near. In regard to ecclesiastical societies, the division fore- 
told is already in a great measure accomplished. Three of our 
great religious denominations have been rent in twain by the sim- 
ple question, "Is slaveholding a sin?" 

It yet remains to be seen whether the American Tract Society 
and the American Board of Foreign Missions will be revolution- 
ized and dismembered by a contest which, we are told, is to be 
annually renewed. In regard to the Union of these States, there 
is too much reason to fear that " we are already two nations in. 
feeling," and to anticipate the near approach of the calamity which 
shall blot out some of the stars in our ensign, and make us two 
nations in fact. 

And what has brought us to the verge of this precipice ? What 
evil spirit has put enmity between the seed of those whom God, 
by his blessing on the wisdom and sacrifices of om" fathers, made 
one flesh ? What has created and fostered this alienation between 
the North and the South, until disunion — that used to be whis- 
pered in corners — stalks forth in open daylight, and is recognized 
as a necessity by multitudes of thinking men in all sections of the 
land? I believe before God, that this division of feeling, of 
which actual disunion will be but the expression and embodiment, 
was begotten of Abolitionism, has been rocked in its cradle and 
fed with its poisoned milk, and instructed by its ministers, luitil 



28 

girded with a strength which comes not altogether of this upper 
world, it is taking hold upon the pillars of the constitution, and 
shattering the noble fabric to its base. 

There was a time when the constitutional questions between the 
North and South — the conflict of material interests growing out 
of their dilferences in soil and production — were discussed in the 
spirit of statesmanshij) and Christian courtesy. Then such men 
as Daniel "Webster on the one side, and Calhoun on the other, 
stood up face to face and defended the rights of their respective 
constitu.ency in words which will be quoted as long as the English 
tongue shall endure, as a model of eloquence and a pattern of 
manly debate. But Abolitionism began to creep in. It came first 
as a purely moral question. But very soOn its doctrines were em- 
bl-aced by a sufficient number to hold the balance of power be- 
tween contending parties in many districts and States. Aspu'ants 
for the Presidency seized apon it as a weapon for gratifjdng their 
ambition or avenging their disappointments. Under the shadov^ 
of their patronage, sincere Abolitionists became more bold and 
abusive in advocating their principles. The unlawful and wicked 
business of enticing slaves from their masters was pushed forward 
with increasing zeaL Men who, in the better days of the republic, 
could not have obtained the smallest office, were elected to Con- 
gress upon this single issue ; and ministers of the gospel descend- 
ed from the pulpit to mingle religious animosity with the boiling 
caldron of political strife. Nor was this process confined to one 
side in the contest. Abuse always provokes recrimination. So 
long as human nature is passionate, hard words will be responded 
to by harder blows. And now behold the result ! In the halls 
where Webster and Calhoun, Adams and McDuffie rendered the 
very name of American statesmanship illustrious, and revived the 
memory of classic eloquence, we have heard the outpouring of 
both Northern and Southern violence from men who must be 
nameless in this sacred place ; and in the land where such slave- 
holders as Washington and Madison united with Hamilton and 
Hancock in cementing the Union which they fondly hoped would 
be perpetual, commerce and manufactures, and all our great indus- 
trial and govermeutal interests, are trembling on the verge of disso- 



29 

lution. And as Abolitionism is the great niiscliief-maker between 
the North and Sonth, so it is the great stumbling-block in the 
way of a peaceful settlement of our difiicidties. Its voice is still 
for war. The spirit of conciliation and compromise it utterl)' ab- 
hors ; and, mingling a horrid mirth with its madness, puts into the 
hands of the advocates of secession the very fans with which to 
blow the embers of strife into a flame. One man threw a torch 
into the great temple of the Ephesians and kindled a conflagration 
which a hundred thousand brave men could not extinguish. One 
man fiddled and sang, and made his courtiers laugh amid the 
burning of Home — and the Abolition preacher " feels good" and 
overflows with merriment, when he sees our merchants and labor- 
ing men running after their chests and the bread of their families, 
"as if all creation was after them," and snuffs on the Southern 
breeze the scent of servile and civil war. Oh, shame — shame that 
it should come to this, and the name of our holy religion be so 
blasphemed ! Let us hope, in Christian charity, that such men do 
not comprehend the danger that stares them in the face. Indeed, 
who of us does fully comprehend it ? In the eloquent words of 
Daniel Webster, " While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, 
gi-atifying prospects spread out before us — for us and for our chil- 
dren. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant 
that in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise." I repeat the 
noble sentiment ; God grant that in my day the curtain maj not 
rise ! Let the night of the grave envelop these eyes in its peace- 
ful sleep, ere their balls are seared with the vision of dissolution 
and civil war. He must be blind who does not perceive that such 
a vision is just ready to burst upon us. 

A kind and wonderful Providence has so tempered the body of 
these States together, so bound and interlaced them with com- 
mercial and social ties, to say nothing of legal obligations, that 
no member can be severed, and especially no contest can be waged 
among the members, without a quivering and anguish in every 
nerve and a stagnation in the vital currents of all. Let one star 
be blotted out from our ensign, and the moral gravitation which 
holds all in their orbits will be paralyzed, if not utterly destroyed. 
The living example of successful secession for one cause, will sug- 



30 

gest the same course for another ; and unless God gives our public 
men a wisdom and forbearance of which the past few years have 
afforded too little evidence, the dissolution of this Union will be 
the signal for the disintegration of its elements. In such a chaos, 
let us not flatter ourselves that we shall be in entire peace 
and safet^^ The contest, on whose perilous edge we seem to 
stand, cannot be merely sectional— all the North on the one 
side, and all the South on the other. It is a conflict that 
will run the ploughshare of division through every State and 
neighborhood in the land. Abolition orators may talk about 
what " we of the North " will do, and will not do, as though all 
the people had bowed down to worship the image they have set up ; 
but other men besides them will claim the right to speak— other 
interests will need to be conserved besides the cause upon which 
they arrogantly assume that victory perches and the smile of 
Heaven rests. " Let not him who putteth on his armor boast as 
he that putteth it off." 

When the thousands of working-men whose subsistence depends 
upon our trade with the South, many of whom have been deluded 
by Abolition demagogues, shall clamor in our streets for bread, free 
labor may present some problems which political economy has not 
solved. And when the commerce of this cosmopolitan city is par- 
alvzed, and all her benevolent and industrial institutions are 
withering in the heat of this unnatural contest, it may become a 
question — nay, is it not already whispered in your counting-houses 

whether this great metropolis can be separated from the people 

with whom her interests and her heart is bound up, and continue 
to be controlled by a legislative policy against which she is con- 
tinually protesting ; or whether, following the great lights of his- 
tory, she will, at all hazards, set up for herself, and, unbolting the 
gateway of her magnificent harbor, invite the free trade of the 
world to pour its riches into her bosom. Such are a few of the 
problems which bring the question of a dissolution of the Union 
home to us. If we were sure of a peaceful solution, at whatever 
pecuniary or social sacrifice, we would not feel so deeply nor speak 
so earnestly. But who knows that it will be peaceful ? Where 
is the surgeon who can sever even one mfuibei' from this body 



31 

politic without the shedding of blood ? Where is the statesman 
or political economist who will undertake to control the parties, or 
direct the industrial interests of any one State, amid the confusion 
and alarm of dissolution ? Let us not deceive ourselves. The 
chasm before us is a yawning abyss, into wliose depths no eye but 
God's can penetrate. Other men may cry, "Who's afraid ?" and 
whistle to keep their courage up ; l3ut I confess my fears. Through 
the curtain that is about to rise, I see shadows at which the horror 
of a great darkness settles down upon my spirit, and the hair of 
my flesh stands up. Oh, my country ! I have loved thee with an 
affection passing the love of woman ! The glories of thy history, 
mingled with the life-blood of my childhood ; thy prosperity has 
been the pride and boast of my riper years ; and, mingling in my 
heart the love of country with the love of Christ, I have cherished 
the hope that thy brightness would never be diminished until it 
blended with the glories of the millennial day ; that thy consumma- 
tion would be like the setting of the morning star, 

" Which goes uot down 
Behind the darkened west, nor hides obscured 
Among- the tempests of the sky, but melts away 
Into the light of heaven." 

And must this precious hope be dispelled ? Must this light go 
out ; and the brightest prospect the world ever beheld disappear 
amid confused noise, and garments rolled in blood? Must the in- 
terest of thirty millions of white men be sacrificed, and the sun of 
civilization be turned back upon the dial of the world's history, 
by a fanaticism which all experience proves to be the black man's 
bitterest enemy ? Let us appeal to the God of peace, in whose 
hands are the hearts of all men, to dispel the fearful vision, to in- 
fuse His loving Spirit into our national councils, to give our pub- 
lic men the meekness of wisdom, and to bind the hearts of all the 
people once more in bonds of brotherly kindness. 

But, if we would have these supplications answered, let us 
prove our faith by our works ; take the beam out of our own eye, 
and obey the twofold precept of the text : " These things teach 
and exhort ; and if any man teach otherwise, from such withdraw 
thvself" 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



